07 Oct 2014

Letshego Holding Group (LHG), a regional market leader in the provision of unsecured consumer finance through payroll lending to mostly government employees has hit the P5.o billion mark in advances made to customers.

This was revealed recently in the unaudited consolidated financial results for the half year ended 31 July 2014. The results show that Botswana and Namibia continue to be significant contributors to the Group and Mozambique rounds off the top three as the fastest growing contributor.

The advances to P5.0 billion are due to an increase of 31 per cent from P3.8 billion the previous year. Profit before tax also increased by 11 per cent to P508 million this year compared to P460 million same time last year.

The increase in profit after tax stood at 3 per cent due to a higher effective tax rate for the Group.Despite yielding positive results, Letshego has a loss leading investment in South Sudan and options to exit are being explored.

The Group has also entered discussions to sell its 24 per cent shareholding in its associate micro finance business in Tanzania. The managing director of LHG, Mr Christopher Low down played the implications saying, ‘neither of these is expected to have a significant financial impact on the Group’.

He noted that they are diversifying their offerings through lending to micro and small enterprises, particularly in Rwanda, education loans, low cost housing, micro finance; which he said are picking in East Africa.

“Locally we have entered the mining sector as an adjacent customer segment in Botswana portfolio. Other initiatives are also on going to transform the Group into a more broad based financial services provider.

We also intend to introduce new technologies and consolidate our processes into one system,” he added. Ends